Uncharted Territory (13 page)

“I told her we ran into rain. She thinks the pawprints are mud. But Big Brother won’t.”

He came around to look at the screen. “It’s that bad?”

“It’s that bad,” I said bitterly. “Any fool can see it’s an anticline.”

“Meaning I should’ve noticed it,” he said, bristling. “I wasn’t the one dawdling behind talking about sex.” He threw his hat down on the ground. “I told you he was going to louse up this expedition.”

“Don’t you dare blame this on Ev!” I said. “He wasn’t the one yelling at me for half an hour while the scans got the whole damned anticline on film!”

“No, he was the one busy noticing birds! And watching pop-ups! Oh, he’s been a lot of use! The only thing he’s done this whole expedition is try to get a jump out of you!”

I slammed the erase button, and the screen went black. “How do you know he hasn’t already gotten one?” I stomped past him. “At least Ev can tell I’m a female!”

I stormed down the rocks, so mad I could have killed him, fine or no fine, and ended up sitting on a gypsum ponypile next to the pool, waiting for him to go off and look for a way down.

After a few minutes he did, clambering up beside the stream without a glance in my direction. I saw Ev come down from the Wall and say something to him. Carson barged past him, and went out along the spur, and Ev stood there staring after him, looking bewildered, and then looked down at me.

He was right about one thing, in all his talk about mating customs. When the hardwiring lacks in, it overrides rational thought, all right. And common sense. I was mad at myself for not seeing the anticline and madder at Carson, and half-sick about what was going to happen when Big Brother saw that log. And I was covered with dried-on gypsum dust and oil and reeking of ponypiles. And, on the pop-ups, my face was always washed.

But that was no reason to do what I did, which was to strip off my pants and shirt and wade into that pool. If Bult saw me I’d be fined for polluting a waterway and Carson would have killed me for not running an f-and-f check first, but Bult was sulking up in the Wall, and the water was so clear you could see every rock on the bottom. It spilled down over rounded boulders into the pool and poured out through a carved-out spout below.

I waded out to the middle, where it was chest-deep, and ducked under.

I stood up, scrubbed gypsum plaster off my arms, and ducked under again. When I came up, Ev was leaning against my gypsum ponypat.

“I thought you were up at the Wall watching shuttlewrens,” I said, smoothing back my hair with both hands.

“I was,” he said. “I thought you were with Carson.”

“I was,” I said, looking at him. I sank into the water, my arms out. “Have you figured out the shuttle-wrens’ courtship ritual?”

“Not yet,” he said. He sat down on the rock and took his boots off. “Did you know the mer-apes on Chichch mate in the water?”

“You sure know a hell of a lot of species,” I said, treading water. “Or do you just make them up?”

“Sometimes,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “When I’m trying to impress a female.”

I paddled out to where the water came up to my shoulders and stood up. The current was faster here. It rippled past my legs. “It won’t work on C.J. The only thing that’ll impress her is Mount Crissa Jane.”

He peeled off his shirt. “It’s not C.J. I’m trying to impress.” He pulled off his socks.

“It’s not a good idea to take your boots off in uncharted territory,” I said, swimming toward him through the deep water. The current rippled past my legs again.

“The female mer-ape invites the male into the water by swimming toward him,” he said. He stripped off his pants and stepped into the water.

I stood up. “Don’t come in,” I said.

“The male enters the water,” he said, wading in, “and the female retreats.”

I stood still, peering into the water. I felt the zag, wider this time, and looked where it should be. All I could see was a ripple over the rocks, like air above hot ground.

“Step back,” I said, putting my hand up. I walked carefully toward him, trying not to disturb the water.

“Look, I didn’t mean to—”

“Slowly,” I said, bending down to get the knife out of my boot. “One step at a time.”

He looked wildly down at the water. “What is it?” he said.

“Don’t make any sudden movements,” I said.

“What is it?” he said. “Is there something in the water?” and splashed wildly out of the water and up onto the ponypile.

What looked like a blurring of the current zagged toward me, and I plunged the knife down with a huge splash, hoping I was aiming at the right place.

“What is it?” Ev said.

Now that its blood was spreading in the water, I could see it, and it was definitely
e.
Its body was longer than Bult’s umbrella, and it had a wide mouth. “It’s a
tssi mitsse,”
I said.

It was also indigenous fauna, and I’d killed it, which meant I was in big trouble. But blood in the water and a fish you couldn’t see weren’t exactly small trouble. I got away from the blood and out of the water.

Ev was still crouching bare-beamed on the rock. “Is it dead?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, drying off my hair with my shirt and then putting it on. “And so am I.” I started pulling the rest of my clothes on.

He got down off the gypsum, looking anxious. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No,” I said, looking in the water and wishing I had been. At least then I could have claimed “self-defense” on the reports.

The blood had spread over the lower half of the pool and was spilling over the spout into the stream. The
tssi mitsse
was drifting toward the spout, too, and I didn’t see any activity around it, but I wasn’t going back in the water to get it.

I left Ev getting his clothes on and went up to the ponies, which were all lying squeezed in among the rocks. Their paws were still wet, and I thought about us walking them up the stream, and Bult not saying a word. Nobody on this expedition was doing their job.

I took a grappling hook and Bult’s umbrella and went down to get the
tssi mitsse
out of the water. Ev was buttoning his shirt and looking embarrassedly at Bult, who was over by the spout, hunched over and looking at the bloody water. I sent Ev to get the holo camera. Bult unfolded himself. He had his log, and he looked pointedly at the umbrella in my hand.

“I know, I know. Forcible confiscation of property,” I said. It didn’t much matter. Bult’s fines were nothing compared to the penalty for killing an indigenous life-form.

The
tssi mitsse
had floated in close to the bank. I hooked it with the umbrella handle and pulled it to the edge and onto the bank, stepping away from it in a hurry, in case it wasn’t dead, but Bult went right over to it, unfolded an arm, and started poking his hand into its side.

“Tssi mitss,”
he said.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “How big are the big ones?”

It was over a meter long and was perfectly visible now that it was out of the water, with transparent jellylike flesh that must have the same refraction index as water.

“Tith,” Bult said, pulling the mouth back. “Keel bait.”

They looked like they could loll bite, all right, or at least take off a foot. There were two long, sharp teeth on either side of its mouth and little serrated ones in between, and that was good. At least it wasn’t a harmless algae-eater.

Ev came back with the camera: He handed it to me, looking at the
tssi mitss.
“It’s huge,” he said.

“That’s what you think,” I said. “You’d better go find Carson.”

“Yeah,” he said, and stood there, hesitating. “I’m sorry I jumped out of the water like that.”

“No harm done,” I said.

I took holos and measurements and brought down the scale to weigh it. When I started to pick it up by the head, Bult said, “Keel bait,” and I dropped it with a thud and then took a closer look at its teeth.

Definitely not an algae-eater. The long teeth on either side weren’t teeth. They were fangs, and when I ran an analysis of the venom, it ate right through the vial.

I hauled the
tssi mitss
by the tail up the rocks to camp and started in on the reports. “Accidental killing of indigenous fauna,” I told the log. “Circumstances—” and then sat and stared at the screen.

Carson came back, scrambling up the rocks from the direction of the pool and stopping short when he saw the
tssi mitss.
“Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking at the screen. “Don’t touch the teeth. They’re full of acid.”

“My shit,” he said softly. “Is this what was in the Tongue when Bult wouldn’t let us cross?”

“Nope. This is the small version,” I said, wishing he’d get on with it.

“It didn’t bite you? You’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m sure,” I said, even though I wasn’t.

He squatted down and looked at it. “My shit,” he said again. He looked up at me. “Evie says you were in the pool when you killed it. What on hell were you doing in there?”

“I was taking a bath,” I said, looking at the screen.

“Since when do you take baths in uncharted territory?”

“Since I ride all afternoon through gypsum dust,” I said. “Since I get covered with oil, trying to wash it off the ponies. Since I find out you can’t even tell half the time whether I’m female or not.”

He stood up. “So you take off all your clothes and go in swimming with Evie?”

“I didn’t take off all my clothes. I had my boots on.” I glared at him. “And I don’t have to have my clothes off for Ev to be able to tell I’m a female.”

“Oh, right, I forgot, he’s the expert on sex. Is that what that was down at the pool, some kind of mating dance?” He kicked at the carcass with his bad foot.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “I’ve got enough to worry about without having to fill out a form for desecrating remains.”

“Worry about!” he said, his mustache quivering.
“You’ve
got enough to worry about? You know what
I’ve
got to worry about? What on hell you’re going to do next.” He kicked the
tssi mitss
again. “You let Wulfmeier open a gate right under our noses, you lead us into an oil field, you take a bath and nearly get yourself killed.”

I slammed the terminal off and stood up. “And I lost the binocs! Don’t forget that! You want a new partner, is that what you’re saying?”

“A new—?”

“A new partner,” I said. “I’m sure there are plenty of females to choose from who’d traipse off with you to Boohte the way I did.”

“That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?” Carson said, frowning at me. “It’s not about Evie at all. It’s about what I said the other night about picking you as a partner.”

“You
didn’t
pick me, remember?” I said furiously.
“Big Brother
picked me. For gender balance. Only it obviously didn’t work because half the time you can’t tell which gender I am.”

“Well, I sure can right now. You’re acting worse than C.J. We been partners for a hundred and eighty expeditions—”

“Eighty-four,” I said.

“We’ve been eating dehydes and putting up with C.J. and getting fined by Bult for eight years. What on hell difference does it make how I picked you?”

“You
didn’t
pick me. You sat there with your feet up on my desk and said, ‘Wanta come?’ and I came, just like that. And now I find out all you cared about is that I could do topographicals.”

“All I cared about—?” He kicked the
tssi mitss
again, and a big piece of clear jelly flew off. “I rode into that luggage stampede and got you. I never even looked at any of those female loaners. What do you want me to do? Send you flowers? Bring you a dead fish? No, wait, I forgot, you got one of those for yourself. Lock horns with Evie so that you can tell which one of us is younger and’s got both feet? What?”

“I want you to leave me alone. I have to finish these reports,” I said, and looked at the screen. “I want you to go away.”

Nobody said a word during supper, except Bult, who fined me for dusting off a lump of gypsum before I sat down. It started to rain and all evening Carson kept going out to the edge of the overhang and looking at the sky.

Ev sat in a corner, looking miserable, and I worked on the reports. Bult didn’t show any inclination to build any more fires. He sat in the opposite corner watching pop-ups until Carson took it away from him and snapped it shut, and then he opened his umbrella, nearly poking me in the eye with it, and went off up to the Wall.

I wrapped up in my bedroll and worked on the reports some more, but it was too cold. I went to bed. Ev was still sitting in the corner, and Carson was still watching the rain.

I woke up in the middle of the night with water dripping on my neck. Ev was still asleep in his bedroll, snoring, and Carson was sitting in the corner, with the pop-up spread out in front of him. He was watching the scene in Big Brother’s offices, the scene where he asked me to go with him.

In the morning he was gone. It was raining really hard, and the wind had started to blow. There was a stream running through the middle of the overhang and pooling at the back. The foot of Ev’s bedroll was already wet.

It was a lot colder, and I figured Carson had gone after firewood, but when I went outside his pony was gone.

I climbed up to the Wall to look for Bult. He wasn’t in any of the chambers. I went back down to the pool.

He wasn’t there, and the pool wasn’t either. Water was pouring everywhere over the rocks, white with gypsum. The ponypile Ev had crouched on was completely covered.

I climbed back up to the Wall and followed it over the ridge. Bult was at the top, looking south toward what you could see of the Ponypiles, which wasn’t much, the clouds were so low.